Play Windows games in Ubuntu?

[MetalX]

How can I install and play windows games (warcraft 3, doom, etc) on Ubuntu? Do I need a special program or something? Or do I have to run the installer a certain way?

 

[robin_bga]

The special program would be an emulator like wine, but tell you what, you cant run anything called a game on linux, i havn't hard or seen someone do that, i tried doing VM on linux using win4lin but it work but couldn't install any drivers so its a total waste of time trying to figure that out. Just have windows as a secondary boot so you can play your games on windows.However someone once told me that there game that are for linux and exist in windows.I didn't try that though.Findout more.Robin

 

[beef_jerky4104]

You could try using wine.

 

[MetalX]

Wine doesn't work with ubuntu or so I read.

 

[Jesse_hz]

Where the f*** did you read that? Linky!

There are a few games that run natively on Linux like Doom 3, UT2004, RTCW etc.

For the games that don't run natively on Linux, Wine is an option, but Wine doesn't work with all games. I've heard that WC3 and WoW can run in Wine.

Another thing to note is the fact that not all installation programs will run under Wine. In some cases you'll need to install the game in Windows and then copy the game files from your windows partition/drive to your Linux partition. A way to avoid copying is to set up the ext2ifs driver in Windows and then install directly to a ext2 or ext3 partition.

The articles here and here as well as the list here may help you.

 

[MetalX]

Thanks Jesse... you say that UT2004 and Doom 3 will just install on linux out of the box? I don't need a special version or anything?

 

[Jesse_hz]

I've never tried Doom 3 on Linux, but installing UT2004 is pretty easy.

On the first CD or the single DVD version of UT2004 there's a file called "linux-installer.sh", run this script in the terminal by typing "sh linux-installer.sh" and it should work, if not then post back here. Once the installer has finished, you should be able to run the game. Well at least that's how it works on the ECE edition. i'm not sure how many versions there are or if any of them don't include the "linux-installer.sh" file. So for UT2004 the answer is: No, you don't need a special version, just a boxed version for Windows.

For Doom 3 you also need a CD of the windows version and you need to download a different installer from the web. Run the installer in a terminal and once the install has finished you'll need to copy some files with the extension '.pak' from the game CD. If you already have a windows install of the game, you don't need the CD, just copy the files in the '/base' directory to the '/base' directory in your linux install of the game.

There are more detailed instructions for installing Doom3 here. The guide is for another distribution so some of it will be sligthly different, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. The 'official' instructions for installing Doom 3 can be found here.

Both installers will ask you for a directory to install the games to, be sure to install them to directories/folders that you as an ordinary user have permission to access or you'll only be able to run the games as root.

Before doing any of the above you should make sure that your Nvidia driver is properly installed or you'll have problems running the games.

 

[thewoosterisroot]

*note* I've just recently started using linux exclusively (almost), and I don't game much, but here is the little bit I know about all this:

I. You can get "Wine", which may run SOME apps, possibly games.

II. You can get a virtual machine player such as "vmware player", or "virtualbox" and run xp inside of it. Of course, you have to have access to a windows distribution to do so.

*note* For either of these the game will only play as well as your hardware configured IN linux would allow it. Xp is sitting inside of linux in this case, so your hardware won't run any better than in linux.

Hope something in there helps.

 

[Jesse_hz]

Running XP on top of Linux should only be a last resort if the game or application you want to run doesn't work in Wine. In some cases dual-booting Linux with XP is a better a idea.

 

[Wobwill]

Has anyone used Cedega? - apparently a program designed specifically to run 'windows' games in Linux.

(I Googled 'windows linux games' - Cedega was top of the list).

I have never used it - but am thinking about installing Ubuntu myself and wondered about the best way of playing my games.

Will.

 

[thewoosterisroot]

While I have not actually used Cedega, I've been doing a bit of digging myself, and it seems that it would probably be your best bet. Though it will be more simple, and probably work far better, than a free version, I do believe it costs $5 a month (that's really not that much) for at least three months. Not the program, I don't think, but a subscription to their site in order to get Cedega. Of course , I would check to make sure the games you want to play are supported:

http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/

Personally, as I don't do much gaming (and actually don't have $5 a month at the moment, for gaming that is) am trying to get a free version Known as "Cedega CVS" to run.
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/wiwimod/index.php?page=HOWTO+Cedega+CVS

Of course, if you have the money, I would definitely suggest paying the $5 a month and getting the supported version of Cedega (the free version is proving difficult for a newb like me to get working).



To Wobwill: You should definitely look into Ubuntu; even if you do not want to install it you can just try the live disk (it runs from the cd), as Ubuntu is the most user friendly of linux distributions I've seen yet. To date I have tried (but not stuck with) Red hat linux, Suse, Fedora Core, and Ubuntu respectively. I'm still pretty new really, and never spent much time on most of them, though I did like Fedora a lot, but Ubuntu seems to be the easiest to get used to, and works well.

 

[dezomania90]

The special program would be an emulator like wine, but tell you what, you cant run anything called a game on linux, i havn't hard or seen someone do that, i tried doing VM on linux using win4lin but it work but couldn't install any drivers so its a total waste of time trying to figure that out. Just have windows as a secondary boot so you can play your games on windows.However someone once told me that there game that are for linux and exist in windows.I didn't try that though.Findout more.Robin

Umm.. To get something that really doesn't have anything to do with the topic straight, Wine isn't an emulator, The name is actually an acronym Wine Is Not an Emulator.


Wine just provides the Windows API. This means that you will need an x86-compatible processor to run an x86 Windows application, for instance from Intel or AMD. The advantage is that, unlike solutions that rely on CPU emulation, Wine runs applications at full speed. Sometimes a program run under Wine will be slower than when run on a copy of Microsoft Windows, but this is more due to the fact that Microsoft has heavily optimized parts of their code, whereas mostly Wine is not well optimized (yet). Occasionally, an app may run faster under Wine than on Windows. Most apps run at roughly the same speed.


And to make this topic relevant to the topic at all, I highly suggest Ubuntu. It is so simple for the user and has many features that general Linux distros don't have, like automatic updates and uses .deb packages sense it is based of of Debian. Over all its really the perfect Linux for someone just learning about Linux in my opinion.

 

[thewoosterisroot]

Umm.. To get something that really doesn't have anything to do with the topic straight, Wine isn't an emulator, The name is actually an acronym Wine Is Not an Emulator.


Wine just provides the Windows API. This means that you will need an x86-compatible processor to run an x86 Windows application, for instance from Intel or AMD. The advantage is that, unlike solutions that rely on CPU emulation, Wine runs applications at full speed. Sometimes a program run under Wine will be slower than when run on a copy of Microsoft Windows, but this is more due to the fact that Microsoft has heavily optimized parts of their code, whereas mostly Wine is not well optimized (yet). Occasionally, an app may run faster under Wine than on Windows. Most apps run at roughly the same speed.




And to make this topic relevant to the topic at all, I highly suggest Ubuntu. It is so simple for the user and has many features that general Linux distros don't have, like automatic updates and uses .deb packages sense it is based of of Debian. Over all its really the perfect Linux for someone just learning about Linux in my opinion.

Thank you for clarifying that.

 

[Wobwill]

Nathanskywalker and others in the pro Ubuntu club

can I play too?

I have the Ubuntu disk, I have been trying to work out which HD format to use on a selected partition of my HD. I am currently stuck on whether to use ext2 or ext3 although (using Acronis disk director) I have the choice of a couple more.

I realise this is rather going off topic now so will hope a moderator puts it where it should be and lets me know.

I have got an old laptop that needs a new HD. I had planned on getting one next pay day and installing ubuntu on that first to see how the whole thing works from scratch.

Will

PS - I thought the topic was about playing games in Linux

 

[thewoosterisroot]

Nathanskywalker and others in the pro Ubuntu club

can I play too?

I have the Ubuntu disk, I have been trying to work out which HD format to use on a selected partition of my HD. I am currently stuck on whether to use ext2 or ext3 although (using Acronis disk director) I have the choice of a couple more.

I realise this is rather going off topic now so will hope a moderator puts it where it should be and lets me know.

I have got an old laptop that needs a new HD. I had planned on getting one next pay day and installing ubuntu on that first to see how the whole thing works from scratch.

Will

PS - I thought the topic was about playing games in Linux

Little bit off topic, so we'll see if this gets moved or not. Someone else may be able to answer your question a little better, but really I would just suggest googling it; you can probably find all you need to do by just doing a little searching, if not, suggest you make a new thread OR try Ubuntu forums

Google!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=installing+ubuntu&btnG=Google+Search

Ubuntu!
http://ubuntuforums.org/

 

[Jesse_hz]

Between ext2 and ext3, ext3 is definitely the right choice. For performance you might consider XFS, but ext3 is generally more well-known and I don't know of any XFS drivers for Windows (there are ext2 drivers for windows)

Really ext3 is just ext2 with journaling. File systems with journaling usually have better protection against corruption and ext3 partitions can be mounted as if they were ext2, but there's rarely any sense in that since you wouldn't be taking advantage of the file-systems journaling capabilities. This only makes sense when mounting a ext3 partition in Windows.

NTFS is another example of a journaled file-system.